In the field of large scale production of prepared foods, a large variety of food pieces are machine coated with batter and breading before being fried in deep fat. This invention relates solely to conveyor belt type breading machines which coat the food product with a flour type breading.
Flour type breading usually has the appearance of normal wheat flour, although it may be formulated to include other material such as spices, starch, other grain flours, etc. Flour type breadings all have a tendency to pack in loose clumps, and in general, they will not flow freely out of the hopper of a breading machine, but must be mechanically discharged from that hopper. One type of discharge mechanism is described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 421,169, filed on Sept. 22, 1982 (now U.S. Pat. No. 4,496,084 dated Jan. 29, 1985, directed to Breading Machine and assigned to the same assignee, wherein a moving open mesh wire belt pulls the flour breading from the hopper to discharge the flour onto food product pieces passing below the discharge opening.
During the coating of many types of food such as chicken parts, the desirable top coating of flour may be three-quarters of an inch thick or more, to insure that crevices in the food product, and sides of the pieces, are all coated. Conventionally, excess flour coating is removed by flipping or tumbling the food pieces one or more times on an open mesh belt or the like, so that the excess flour may fall through the mesh and be returned to the breading machine hopper for reuse.
However, in some instances, the food pieces cannot be flipped or tumbled to remove excess flour, nor is removal of large excesses of flour by air knife practical due to dust being blown about by the air knife. Such food pieces include most raw meat patties wherein the thickness dimension is far less than any other dimension, so that the patties have a tendency to fold if flipped. Or, if the plan view of the patty is irregular, or other than round, it is also very difficult to keep patties from landing on edge while being flipped. Therefore, it is desirable to add only a light coating of flour as evenly as possible so that excess coating is minimized and flipping is not necessary.
The normal discharge of flour from the hopper of the type as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 421,169, and from other similar types of flour hoppers, is oftentimes in loose clumps which may range from tiny to thimble size. These clumps make no meaningful difference when a thick top coating is desired, but when a thin top coating is desired, a light discharge of clumps may coat some areas of product up to 1/2" thick, yet leave other areas bare.
The sprinkle belt of the present invention is intended to overcome the above deficiency among other hoppers known to the art, and therefore a primary object of this invention is to provide a mechanism for receiving the normal clumped top cover discharge from a flour hopper and distributing that discharge thinly and evenly upon the product pieces passing below.
Another object of this invention is to provide a mechanism as thus defined which is operable to eliminate the normal heavy top coating of flour as applied to food product pieces in the usual flour type breading machine, yet is operable to coat the top of the food product in an acceptable manner.
Another object is to provide a mechanism as thus defined which eliminates the necessity for flipping or tumbling food product pieces to remove excessively heavy top coating of flour.
Another object of this invention is to provide means in a flour type breading machine which will insure that the food pieces being coated in this machine are lightly and evenly coated on their top surface.
Additional objects and advantages of the sprinkle belt of the present invention will become apparent to one skilled in the art which it relates, and upon reference to the following disclosure of a preferred embodiment thereof, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings wherein: